Both CtrlAltStudio v3 viewer and the Android LittleSight client both updated recently.
CtrlAltStudio
The stereoscopic version of CtrlAltStudio, the Firestorm-based v3 viewer for Windows and Mac was updated on September 27th to version 1.0.0.34288, which provides a number of improvements and bug fixes, including:
Added Ctrl-Alt-3 keyboard shortcut that toggles stereoscopic 3D on/off.
Added work-around to get stereoscopic 3D working with AMD Radeon on Windows.
Fixed world not being updated after leaving stereoscopic 3D display mode.
Fixed flycam with 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator in stereoscopic 3D.
Fixed projected light rendering in stereoscopic 3D.
Fixed shift-drag object selection when editing in stereoscopic 3D.
This version of CtrlAltStudio does not support Oculus Rift, but uses OpenGL quad-buffered stereoscopic 3D, it requires NVIDIA graphics drivers with 3D Vision support (314.07 or later) and monitors set to 120Hz. The viewer needs to be running in screen mode, and suitable 3D glasses are required (does not work with 3D Vision Discover anaglyph). The capability should work with GeForce GTS250 or better, NVIDIA Quadro cards, AMD Radeon HD 6000 or better and FireGL V7600 or better with recent drivers.
The release notes for version 1.0.0.34288 are available from the CtrlAltStudio website.
LittleSight
I first covered the LittleSight text client on July 22nd, 2012, with a review of version 1.0.4. Since then there has been further development of the client since then, notably with a paid teleport service to get around the grid.
On September 29th, LittleSight marked its arrival on the SL Third Party Viewer Directory with the release of version 1.5.0.0, although the update doesn’t appear to bring any additional functionality to the client.
I stumbled upon Alki by chance as I nosed through the Nature and Parks section of the Destination Guide. I’m attracted to places which offer a good teaser photo and an enticing description, and Alki’s entry does both, the description in particular reading:
Alki is a living, evolving project inspired by the Pacific Northwest. Fun activities and scenic spots to play and hang with friends. Wander the peaceful forest path, take in an amazing sunset at the beach. Home to Z&A Coffeehouse & Art Studio.
It’s a charming place to explore, and offers those looking for a venue where they can listen to good music, dance and have fun exploring, swimming, playing games or sailing.
Surrounded by tall mountains, the region is sort-of divided into two. The north side of the island comprises a rocky plateau, on which sits the Z&A Coffeehouse, and beside it the Z&A Gallery. The former is a two-storey structure, the coffeehouse occupying the lower, complete with dance floor, bar, alcove seating and so on, while upstairs is what is probably best described as an indoor garden under a curving glass roof.
The art gallery is smaller than the coffeehouse, and fronts onto a circular outdoor dance floor. There are four ways off of the plateau: the path initially used to reach it after arriving in the region; a teleporter to a space station music venue out in deep space; a wooden stairway leading down to another music stage nestled under the shadow of the plateau; and a rope slide which takes you right across the region to the south side.
The southern part of the region is given over to open countryside. Here paths wind through a varied landscape of rugged terrain, open stretches of water, trees, and even to a small beach, all of which is laid out in a way which makes full use of the available land area in a very natural way. Nor does it end there. Follow the paths down to the south-east side of the island and you’ll come across a little campsite, with a water slide nearby, and just beyond it, a barge offering individual and group games, or you can take a little sailboat out on the water (do be sure to keep well inside the buoys out on the water if you do!) or go for a swim.
There are other imaginative uses of the available space which make Alki a joy to explore. Take one wooden stairway down from the coffeehouse for example, and you’ll come to the Dragonfly Inn, sitting on its own little outcrop overlooking the water below. Further down the rocky face of the plateau, wooden cabins cling to its face, limpet-like. There are even a couple of houses sitting on stilts out in the bay. Whether these are intended as private residencies or not, I’ve no idea; both are currently unfurnished (one appears as if it might still be under construction). Also, keep your eyes open for the local birds as they flit around, particularly down by the waters of the region.
Music is offered every Tuesday and Friday at the Z&A Coffeehouse between 19:00-21:00 SLT, with a rotating choice of new indie, Goth rock, indie / alternative rock and pure punk through the Tuesdays of each month, and electro-darkwave every Friday.
Alki has been very creatively put together and offer much to see and do; if you’re looking for a place that offers a good mix of things to do, you might want to check it out.
Back in June 2013, I had the opportunity to interview Rod Humble for Prim Perfect magazine. As explained in the piece, things didn’t entirely go according to plan, and I have to admit to being a little disappointed with the end result. Due to various reasons, the piece didn’t see the light of day until Issue 49 of Prim Perfect, which appeared in September 2013, and which is available on-line and in-world. What follows here is the article in full, reprinted with permission.
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2013 marks the 10th Anniversary of Second Life as a publicly accessible platform. In that time, Linden Lab has seen it grow from a small venture into a product which, whilst still niche, generates revenues in the region of $75 million a year, and keeps people from around the globe logging-in to it as a part of their daily routine.
In that time four men have helmed the Lab through highs and lows: Philip Rosedale, the man responsible for starting it all, Mark Kingdon, Bob Komin, who also served as the Lab’s CFO, and Rod Humble, known to us all as Rodvik Linden.
Rod Humble, with a little reminder from his past
Humble, a veteran of Virgin Interactive, Sony Online and EA Games, brought considerable games industry experience with him when he joined the Lab at the start of 2011. Since then, he’s been the driving force behind a huge amount of work on Second Life, and in trying to expand the company’s product portfolio with a growing range of apps and games.
As part of Second Life’s anniversary celebrations, he spent a lot of time being interviewed in many venues and through a variety of media platforms. Our request to be included generated a warm and positive response, but was then derailed somewhat by scheduling issues on all sides.
Originally, the idea had been to converse via Skype, but as the scheduling conflicts bit, we were forced to use e-mail as the medium of exchange. While not ideal, it at least gave me the opportunity to gain a small window into the mind of the man in charge of the virtual world we feel so very passionate about.
I started out by turning the clock back and asking him what initially drew him to accepting the CEO position at the Lab, specifically what was it about the company, as well as the platform, that attracted him.
I immediately saw and fell in love with SL when I was approached. I was delighted and amazed at the creativity within the world.
As a platform, Second Life puts an incredible amount of power in the users’ hands, which is obvious from the range and complexity of things people have created in-world. Beyond the platform itself, I think a key strength of Second Life is the model of allowing users to monetize their creations. That sets up a situation where everyone wins – users are rewarded for being creative, and the virtual world continually gets fresh and interesting content and experiences for everyone, beyond what would be possible if Linden Lab had to create everything.
Secondlife allows for extraordinary creativity, as exemplified by Claudia222 Jewell’s amazing creations
His tenure at the Lab has not only been marked by the introduction of new capabilities to the platform – the most notable perhaps being mesh and pathfinding – but by a strong push to improve usability, and performance. Not long after he arrived, the viewer was given a major overhaul and underwent extensive user testing. More recently, we’ve seen a 12-month effort under the umbrella title of “Project Shining” aimed at massively improving SL’s performance and stability. Given this emphasis, I asked him if he saw matters of performance and so on as potential threats to the viability of the platform when he first joined the company.
Any active user of Second Life can tell you that performance is a big issue. It’s a hard one for us to solve as well, because of the inherent complexity of the platform and the huge number of variables involved – like differences in broadband speeds, hardware specs, etc. But, it’s an area that I’m proud to say we’re making great strides in with efforts like Project Sunshine. Users should see bigger performance improvements from that project as the server-side changes roll-out.
But there were also other usability issues – like the complexity of Magic Boxes for Marketplace deliveries and the confusing number of communications tools – that we’ve worked to improve.
Two long-term issues for the platform have been user sign-ups and user retention. When it came to sign-ups, Humble again quickly made his presence felt, overseeing a top-to-toe redesign of the account creation process. This resulted in a significant increase in the number of daily sign-ups, one which still sees some 400,000 new accounts created monthly. However user retention has remained elusive; only around 20% of new accounts are still active a month after signing-up.
By Humble’s own admission, this is not a an exciting figure, and he’s set himself and the Lab the goal of improving it, going so far as to say his ambition is to get all those who said “Meh” to SL “back”. As a part of this, the Lab has resumed its examinations of the “new user experience”, testing new “Social Islands” and “Learning Islands” alongside the existing “Destination Islands” in an attempt to find out what does and doesn’t work.
This renewed interest on the Lab’s part led me to wonder if it might mean we’ll be seeing something in the way of directed experiences, so that “modellers get to aeroplanes rather than a nightclub”, to paraphrase a remark he famously made in the SL Universe forums in 2012.
Linden Lab has just launched a new promo-style video, together with a blog post, which highlights recent changes and improvements to the platform.
Playing a little on SL’s birthday, the 57-second long piece is a typical sample of recent Second Life video promotions: plenty of fast cuts and beat-laden music. However, the text inserts included with it tend to suggest the target audience is perhaps those who may have tried SL and since wandered away, rather than those who have never tried it at all.
If this is the intended focus of the video, it shouldn’t come as any surprise. Around the time of the 10th Anniversary celebrations, Rod Humble made it clear in a number of interviews with the press, some of which I covered in these pages, that one of his aims has been to try to “win back” those 30+ million people who have tried SL only to walk away; and that it is something that has been on his mind for a good while. It’ll be interesting to see, therefore, if this is a one-off, or the first step in part of a much wider campaign.
Now, before people start getting all worked-up about Facebook, being “outed” and generally getting knickers knotted, there are a couple of points which need to be understood:
SLShare is opt-in. If you don’t want to use it, you don’t have to, you can ignore it
SLShare will only work if you actually have a Facebook account – so LL aren’t doing any “sneaky back-door outing” or “forcing” anyone into Facebook.
The blog post announcing the feature reads in part:
SLShare is a new, 100% opt-in Viewer feature that will allow you to easily update your Facebook status, share photos, and check-in from Second Life locations to your Facebook wall.
Whether you’re at a great in-world event and want to let your Facebook friends know where to join you, want to show off a photo of your avatar modeling your latest Marketplace purchase, or just share a thought inspired by your in-world explorations, SLShare makes it easy to share pieces of your Second Life experiences with your Facebook network.
The blog post also notes that the feature “isn’t yet available for everyone”, however, the release candidate viewer with the SLShare capability – version 3.6.7.281331 – can be downloaded via the SL wiki.
If you do opt to manually download the RC viewer, note that it will, by default, overwrite your current release version of the SL viewer (if installed), so please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to avoid this.
As noted in my original report, the Facebook capabilities are contained in a new floater, accessed via Me > Post to Facebook …, which in turn comprises four tabs.
The four tabs of the SLShare floater
The tabs are:
Status tab: allows someone to post a text comment via their Facebook account
Photo tab: allows someone to upload a snapshot to their FB account. As with the current Profile Feed option in the snapshot floater, the resolution of the image can be selected at upload (minimum 800×600), and an optional SLurl / comment can be included with the image
Check-in tab: allows someone to share the SLurl for their current in-world location via Facebook, together with a short comment on the location and a map image if they wish
Account Tab: will allow those with a Facebook account to connect their SL account to it for the purposes of posting from SL to Facebook.
The last option will open a browser window allowing a user to log-in to their Facebook account and link their Second Life account to it for posting purposes (this must be done for any of the other tabs to actually communicate with a Facebook account). In addition, to make accessing the floater easier, the viewer introduces a dedicated Facebook toolbar button.
To help explain the new functionality, Torley has produced another of his TuTORials, and there is also a Knowledge Base page explaining the capability and its options.
Again, please remember that this is an opt-in capability, and no-one is being forced to use it. Whether SLShare will evolve to include other social media sharing, or whether additional capabilities for sharing with other social media platforms will be added to the viewer remains to be seen.
In the meantime, SLShare is available via a release candidate viewer, as noted above, and will be progressing as the de facto release viewer in due course.
The Verge has an article out about Second Life. Second Life’s Strange Second Life may not sound the most promising of titles, and the opening paragraph may not make for the most inspiring of reading material:
Do you remember Second Life? Set up by developer Linden Lab in 2003, it was the faithful replication of our modern world where whoring, drinking, and fighting were acceptable. It was the place where big brands moved in as neighbours and hawked you their wares online. For many, it was the future — our lives were going to be lived online, as avatars represented us in nightclubs, bedrooms, and banks made of pixels and code.
However, never judge a book – or in this case, an article – by its title (or its opening paragraph!). What follows is actually an astute look at the platform, as seen through the eyes of a newcomer, Chris Stokel-Walker, a freelance writer in the UK, and through those of long-time resident Fee Berry, as well as a few others.
Fee, who lives in Middlesex, England, is actually none other than Caliandris Pendragon, also once known as Misty Mole. She’s been involved in Second Life since 2004, having migrated from the worlds of games such as Riven and Myst. She’s been both a resident of SL and she’s been employed – until June of this year, at least – by Linden Lab. As such, she is eminently qualified to talk about SL from all sides.
The attraction which brought Fee to Second Life is more than likely the very same attraction which brought each of us here in the first place and caused us to “stick”, as Stokel-Walker relates:
“It’s like every toy you ever had, all rolled into one,” she tells me in awed tones, recalling the power of the game to keep her playing nearly a decade on. It’s also liberating, she explains, allowing her to forget about the kids, the responsibilities, and the extra few inches she’d rather not have. It lets her cut free.
Fee provides a very clear and concise view of Second Life, one we can all perhaps identify with: the wonders that it presents to us; the opportunities for discovering new friends, learning new things; the initial shaping of the world by Linden Lab – and the fact that, when all is said and done, it’s entirely possible that not everyone at the Lab really gets the in-world culture the company gave birth to simply by allowing Second Life to be so open-ended.
It is this examination of the cultural and historical aspects of Second Life, unburdened by bias, that helps to set this piece apart from the more usual offerings the media serve-up when talking about the platform. Not only do we get Fee’s perspective, we also get to hear from Hunter Walker. One of the original Lab employees working on Second Life from before the launch, but since departed, Hunter also provides insight into the early days, again as Stokel-Walker relates:
It was conceived as a space that gave you a set of choices that were missing from reality. “In your first life you don’t necessarily get to fly. Here you can fly. In your first life you can’t choose what you look like. Here you can choose what you look like — and it’s malleable.”
Nor does it end there. This is a piece which has not been written as a late-coming feature built from SL’s tenth anniversary infographic. Rather, it is a piece that has come about through experimentation and research, with Stokel-Walker spending time in-world, going through all the pangs, trials and tribulations of a newcomer to Second Life. He is clearly someone who is attracted to the platform without – at least initially understanding why. And this brings an added element to the article, because his story will be so familiar with many of us:
For the longest time I didn’t get it. I’d spent several weeks pottering about, teleporting from one place to another. I stood on a dock of a bay, overlooking an azure sea and hearing the whistle of the wind. I walked through a cold, gun-metal gray futuristic world full of walkways that reminded me of any number of first-person shooters. I’d chased a woman, inexplicably sprinting, arms flailing, through the palazzos of Milan, looking at the fashion boutiques. I’d visited London — in reality a tired collection of worn clichés, a cardboard cut-out of the Beatles crossing the street down from a roundabout with a red telephone box on one corner. It was kind of cool, but it was also corny.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 